peanuts and crackerjacks

When I was a child, I used to take car trips with my family in our station wagon, and if they were long enough rides, we were sure to start singing the "car songs." The titles of those songs as we knew them included, The Erie Canal Song, Old Dan Tucker, This Land is Your Land, and of course, Take Me Out to the Ball Game, among others. We sang two versions of the ball game song, the "regular," and the "off-beat," meaning you started the whole song on the second beat of the song, to give it some syncopation, and then it ended one beat before you would think it would. It worked, though. It was so much fun to sing it that way, and sometimes, when I am driving (by myself) on a long car trip, I find myself singing it and having a really good time.

Why am I thinking about this? Well, it kind of came to me that I like the ironic, and I am strangely okay with things turning out how we don't exactly expect them to be. Being okay with the unexpected is actually a pretty good way to be since we often can't predict endings (nor would we want to, else it would be much less fun to play the game).

Speaking of ball parks and unexpected endings, Matt (and Tom) were in a 12-year-old regional wood bat tournament over this weekend. The team practiced for about 3 weeks to prepare for it, and they won both their games Saturday, putting them in contention for winning their pool on Sunday morning to advance to the championship game. I stayed home to do house and yard work on Saturday (and also, I had been invited to a fun women's dinner party at my friend Carol's in honor of our friend Susan's birthday). I joined in the fun on Sunday, leaving the house at 7 a.m. to spend the day at a large ball park in Syracuse -- in the hot summer sun. My sister Amy met me at the game, and it was really nice to spend some time with her at the old ball game.

Our little town doesn't usually win against the larger Syracuse-area teams, but against the odds, they won their game yesterday morning, and put in a good efforts in their loss to last year's NYS defending champs in the championship game yesterday afternoon. They were presented with runners-up medals, and although disappointed, they walked out of there as winners. No one expected them to get that far. (The kids, of course, expected to win it all after going 3-0, so they were disappointed, but they did seem to get over it by "goofy photo" time).